I love the season of Lent. It’s filled with spiritual reflection, haunting hymns, beautiful artwork and the promise of the most wonderful week of the church year waiting for us at the end. People add longer devotions and extra church services to their schedules. They give up pleasures in order
My boys and I like to take walks through the neighborhood together. It’s a tradition I started when they were very little, and we were looking for reasons to get out of the house. It continues to be a favorite activity of ours even now that they are older. In
It’s hard to find things that are truly free in our world today. The promise of free shipping on your online order is too often just a gimmick to make you spend more than you had planned. The price for the “free” breakfast at the hotel you stop at on
Among my four sons, we have had baptisms at three different churches. Such is the life of a pastor’s family. It gave me a chance to observe different baptism traditions and practices common in churches though, and I found it an interesting study. Two of our churches gave us banners
We had two baptisms at church recently. Ours is an older congregation with not a huge number of families so baptisms are usually a bit of an event when they happen. But these were even more memorable than usual. They were baptisms of two school age children that had started
Previously I wrote about our culture’s love of new trends. I’m sure from the day this was published to the day you are reading it, we have seen the rise and fall of several fads. One of the reasons people chase fads is to experience the emotional high that such
It’s hard to keep up with the trends. It seems every week there is a new item that everyone just has to have. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a new thermos, style of jeans, peculiar looking stuffed animal, or chocolate candy bar, people will jump on a new trend
When I was in fifth grade my teacher gave each student in her class a copy of the liturgical calendar wheel. My classmates and I colored each section the correct liturgical color and used it throughout the year to keep track of the seasons in the Lutheran church year. To
Do you have a favorite part about getting ready for Christmas? My husband loves putting up the outside lights. We are by no means an extravagant Christmas display house that inspires those passing by to drive by slowly, but our several strings of white lights that follow our roof line
I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, Advent calendars have gotten way out of hand! When I was young, one looked forward to opening a door with a tiny Christmas picture and a corresponding Bible passage waiting on the other side. My sister and I each had one.
